Malacostraca

Searched as Malacostraca indet.. The Paleobiology Database treats Malacostraca as the accepted name.

Malacostraca is the second largest of the six classes of pancrustaceans after insects, containing about 40,000 living species, divided among 16 orders. Its members, the malacostracans, display a great diversity of body forms and include crabs, lobsters, spiny lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns, isopods, amphipods, mantis shrimp, and many other less familiar animals. They are abundant in all marine environments and have colonised freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are segmented animals, united by a common body plan comprising 20 body segments, and divided into a head, thorax, and abdomen.

Malacostraca

Uncredited · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
MulticrustaceaPBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 301 million years on record.

The record covers at least 303.7 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 307 Mya to 774 ka.

Carboniferous — about 2 of 104 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 104 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 1 of 104 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 2 of 104 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 94 of 104 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 104 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 104 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 104 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 104 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 104 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 104 occurrences313–303 Mya — about 1 occurrence303–292 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences157–146 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences146–136 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences115–104 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences104–94 Mya — about 2 occurrences94–84 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences73–63 Mya — about 93 occurrences63–52 Mya — about 1 occurrence31–21 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21–10 Mya — about 2 occurrences10–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences303.7 Mya1.8 Mya313 Mya0 Mya

104 occurrences of Malacostraca on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

104 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

18 formations

Providence — 31.91°N, 86.17°WProvidence — 31.97°N, 86.00°WProvidence — 31.86°N, 85.95°WProvidence — 31.92°N, 85.82°WProvidence — 31.95°N, 85.68°WProvidence — 31.92°N, 85.35°WProvidence — 31.84°N, 85.22°WProvidence — 31.76°N, 85.13°WProvidence — 31.73°N, 85.12°WProvidence — 31.80°N, 85.00°WProvidence — 31.96°N, 85.45°WProvidence — 31.89°N, 85.21°WProvidence — 31.87°N, 85.72°WPrairie Bluff — 34.63°N, 88.84°WPrairie Bluff — 34.25°N, 88.97°WPrairie Bluff — 33.73°N, 88.90°WPrairie Bluff — 32.73°N, 88.30°WPrairie Bluff — 32.66°N, 88.17°WPrairie Bluff — 32.23°N, 87.50°WPrairie Bluff — 32.14°N, 87.42°WPrairie Bluff — 32.04°N, 86.78°WPrairie Bluff — 31.97°N, 86.72°WPrairie Bluff — 31.98°N, 86.00°WPrairie Bluff — 31.92°N, 86.17°WPrairie Bluff — 31.98°N, 85.92°WEscondido — 29.30°N, 98.84°WEscondido — 29.35°N, 99.02°WEscondido — 29.27°N, 99.05°WEscondido — 29.25°N, 99.24°WEscondido — 29.32°N, 99.27°WEscondido — 29.24°N, 99.28°WEscondido — 29.18°N, 99.66°WEscondido — 28.73°N, 100.48°WEscondido — 28.52°N, 100.31°WChiwapa — 34.63°N, 88.94°WChiwapa — 34.46°N, 88.90°WChiwapa — 34.38°N, 88.98°WChiwapa — 34.36°N, 88.93°WChiwapa — 34.16°N, 88.96°WChiwapa — 34.25°N, 88.96°WPeedee — 33.91°N, 79.45°WPeedee — 33.83°N, 79.25°WPeedee — 34.27°N, 77.95°WOwl Creek — 34.82°N, 88.88°WOwl Creek — 34.88°N, 88.87°WOwl Creek — 34.63°N, 88.84°WOwl Creek — 37.00°N, 89.85°WOwl Creek — 36.98°N, 89.88°WSevern — 38.92°N, 76.85°WSevern — 39.33°N, 76.03°WCorsicana Marl — 31.40°N, 96.73°WCorsicana Marl — 30.30°N, 97.46°WCorsicana Marl — 29.63°N, 98.04°WPaw Paw — 32.73°N, 97.32°WPaw Paw — 32.87°N, 97.30°WWild Cow — 34.95°N, 106.30°WVincentown — 39.97°N, 74.68°WTinton — 40.30°N, 74.10°WLoxton — 34.15°S, 139.91°EBermont — 27.70°N, 82.50°WIhungia — 40.27°S, 176.30°EKhodzhakul — 40.10°N, 65.80°EChitarwata — 30.08°N, 70.33°EMorrison — 44.46°N, 104.73°W

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The named rock units Malacostraca has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Malacostraca and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Malacostraca and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

2,781 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,157 sites for Malacostraca, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

13 references

Each of the 104 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1 further reference is not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Malacostraca

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Malacostraca was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itMulticrustacea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Latreille 1802)